US belligerence on North Korea

Solly Rakgomo | Friday April 21, 2017 13:28

Washington has subjected North Korea to starvation, prevented its Government from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions, and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.

Negotiations aren’t possible because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees as its inferior. Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington’s ultimatums as threateningly as possible. The hope, of course, is that North Korea will cave in to Uncle Sam’s bullying and do what they are told.

But the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there’s no sign that it will. Instead, they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war. There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX News or CNN, may differ on this point And let’s be honest, the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn’t joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great hereafter, is because firstly North Korea does not sit on an ocean of oil, and that the North has the capacity to reduce her neighbours into smouldering debris-fields. Absent Kim’s WMDs, Pyongyang would have faced a pre-emptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi’s. Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism.

The American people, whose pathetic grasp of history does not extend beyond the events of 9/11 have no idea of the way the US fights its wars or the horrific carnage and destruction it unleashed on North Korea. Mike Whitney says in the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theatre during World War II.

Furthermore according to US journalist Blaine Harden, over a period of three years or so, the USA killed 20% of the population,” Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later Secretary of State, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

 The transatlantic barbarians bombed the cities with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for many days making it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets.  The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national security. Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems. Whitney says the US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula, it was mix of imperial overreach and pure unalloyed viciousness the likes of which we’ve seen many times in the past.

According to the Asia-Pacific Journal, this is how Washington does business, and it hasn’t changed ever since. Anyone else who gets in Uncle Sam’s way, winds up in a world of hurt. The savagery of America’s war against the North left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people. Whatever the cost, the North cannot allow a similar scenario to take place in the future. They must be prepared to defend themselves. If that means nukes, then so be it. Self-preservation is the top priority.

Is there a way to end this pointless standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, a way to mend fences and build trust? Of course there is. My view is that the US just needs to start treating North Korea with respect and follow through on their promises. The promise to build the North two light-water reactors to provide heat and light to their people in exchange for an end to its nuclear weapons programme. You won’t read about this deal in the mainstream media because the media in the USA is just the propaganda wing of the Pentagon.

They have no interest in promoting peaceful solutions. Their stock-in-trade is war, war and more war. The North wants the US to honour its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework, says Former US President, Jimmy Carter in September 2005.  That agreement reaffirmed the basic premises of the 1994 accord. The Agreed Framework according to Carter included denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, a pledge of non-aggression by the United States and steps to evolve a permanent peace agreement to replace the U.S.-North Korean-Chinese cease-fire that has been in effect since July 1953. Unfortunately, no substantive progress has been made since 2005.

 Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty. USA should consider responding to this offer. Most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn’t.

The problem lies with the United States; it’s unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who, through Washington’s own stubborn ignorance, are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be capable of hitting American cities. The dumb Trump team is sticking with a policy that has failed for 63 years and which clearly undermines US national security by putting American citizens directly at risk.